Rating: 
Summary: Rivets you to your seat!
Review: When Michael Crichton wrote the book this film is based on it was a critical success (as have been many of his books). When I read it I found it to be highly technical and hard to follow.The film cleared all of that up for me and it was very engaging. The content in this film was very much a real concern in the early 1970s as trips to the moon had begun on a regular basis and the possibility of bringing back something bad was a worry. When watching this film you really feel involved in the story. The script was well written and Robert Wise, who is no stranger to ScFi, (The Day The Earth Stood Still and Star Trek The Motion Picture) shows his versitility in his direction (he also directed films like West Side Story and The Sound Of Music). The actors, although they may not be recognized by name, are great in their characterizations (all great character actors). Ads for this film at the time touted "some scenes may be too intense for young children". This probably referred to the scenes that graphically showed many of the small town's residents laying dead in their tracks. The remastering to DVD was well done and the film is presented in widescreen. A must see for Science Fiction fans!
Rating: 
Summary: Suspenseful
Review: This movie was one of the most thrilling movies I have ever watched. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the whole movie. Robert Wise a good direstor to pick for this job
Rating:
Summary: This movie will grip you to your set, just as the novel!
Review: Just like the great novel, I thought that the movie was absolutely gripping and suspensful. I remember seeing bits and parts of the movie on cable while I was in Vermont a few years ago. Ever since then I have been trying to find the book and movie. Once I checked out the book from our local library, I read it in around three sittings. The book was so grippping and interesting to read. After finishing the book, I got the great movie. I have viewed the movie numeroious times and I keep getting more out of it. The movie portrays the novel quite well, with a few exseptions. The movie and book alike got me to thinking about deadly viruses and outter space exploration. I recommend this ovie to any one who has read the book, or is looking for a mysterious and suspensful movie! IT'S GREAT!!!
Rating:
Summary: You already know how it ends.
Review: And yet, you just can't help yourself. Under Robert Wise's direction, this tale of microbiological Armageddon unfolds with such perfectly metered suspense that by the 100th viewing, you STILL find yourself riveted to your couch. You HAVE to see how it turns out, even though you already know. Although the film is well over 20 years old, and the computer equipment at the Wildfire laboratory shows its age, this is a perfect change-of-pace film for any movie monster fan aged, say, 7 on up. Heck, you've probably already let your kids see the bloody carnage in "Jurassic Park" anyway. Instead of the usual radioactive mutated towering apparition that flattens cities and topples skyscrapers, the monster in "The Andromeda Strain" is so tiny, it takes powerful electron microscopes to see it. Though tiny in size, Andromeda has the potential to wreak more havoc than your typical Godzilla. The average movie monster can only cause damage wherever he can stomp, smash or exhale a blast of fiery breath. Andromeda has the potential to be carried to every corner of the world by the winds, where it could conceivably wipe out all life. Try to top THAT, Godzilla! Even worse, it seems to feed on nuclear radiation. The real star of the film is Wildfire itself. A government facility located (we thought) safely away from populated areas, it bristles with everything a microbiologist needs to avert a biological disaster. . .or does it? Seeking an unprecedented realism, director Robert Wise insisted that everything on the set be real, from the computer terminals (with their quaint light pens) all the way to the electron microscopes. The Wildfire set is every microbiologist's dream come true and it's populated by a quartet of actors! Since the presence of a big-name star might blunt the impact of this high-tech visual feast, Wise carefully assembled a cast of fine actors who just don't happen to be household names. Without rehashing the characterizations, we'll just say that Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson and Kate Reid couldn't possibly have been more perfect for their roles. With a less competent cast, "The Andromeda Strain" could have degenerated into a parody of itself. This is gritty work, saving the world from biological annihilation, damn it! It takes real ACTORS, not just pretty-boy movie stars! Go ahead. Be scared out of your wits by something so tiny, you can't even see it. I dare you to try and get up before it's over.
Rating:
Summary: Great deserves more credit!
Review: this film is a very good version of the book when I first saw it i had allready read the book and it seemed to follow it word by word the only diference is that they changed the sex of one of the team members but otherwise ti is perfect!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic. A rare hard-science movie with continuity.
Review: I am disappointed that so many think the movie looks "dated". The movie is not trying to be ambiguous about it's time setting. It TAKES PLACE in the 70's during the cold war. The computers and technology LOOKED that way in the 70's. It's not TRYING to be a 90's or 21st century story! Would you rather the technology look like Star Trek the original series or Forbidden Planet? Now THOSE look dated in any time setting. Would you prefer the computers look like 1990's technology? That wouldn't fit the storyline, which is tailored around the tech of the time (for instance, the epilepsy scene where the doctor had to re-perform her culture comparisons - this scene would be moot in a modern automated lab where human intervention and control is kept to a minimum). "Strain" is about a secret program in the 70's and a probe launched and recovered and studied in the 70's and a barely contained epidemic that took place in the 70's. I can't say it enough. Book translation accuracy aside, it is an excellent and consistent hard scifi movie. I showed it to my layperson roommates and they loved it (i am a bit of a science head myself).
Rating:
Summary: FRIGHTENING WHAT IF MOVIE
Review: THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN was the first of Michael Crichton's novels to be successfully screened. It's a tense, suspenseful look at what happens when an unknown virus returns to earth via one of our satellites and quickly decimates the entire population (except 2--a baby and a drunk) of a small town. The movie's focus is on finding out what the virus is and how it can kill so expeditiously.
Robert Wise who gave us THE HAUNTING and THE SOUND OF MUSIC uses some split screen techniques which work well, and keeps the movie dark and suspenseful. Although it has become somewhat dated in its technologies, Wise elicits good performances from the cast, especially Kate Reid, David Wayne and Paula Kelly. Arthur Hill is a little to stiff for my liking, and James Olson overplays some of his scenes.
Still a worthwhile film, and one that will scare the pants off of you in light of where we've come with germ warfare.
Rating:
Summary: Potent Strain of Realism
Review: When a man-made satellite crash-lands on Earth near a small desert town, the town residents are unaware that it carries a deadly virus from space and therefore take no precautions when handling the device. Within a frighteningly short period of time, all of the town's inhabitants are dead. All, that is, except for a crying baby and the town drunk. After being alerted to the situation, the U.S. government fears that the world's entire population may be in danger of extinction, so a crackerjack team of the nations top medical scientists is dispatched to a secret underground laboratory so that they can study the survivors and discover a cure or treatment for the alien virus before it's too late. 1971's THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN is one of the few science-fiction movies released in the immediate wake of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) that has successfully retained high status in the SF genre, and that's because it is also one of the few SF films from that era that actually takes the genre seriously and challenges the viewer's intellect. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton--one of the first movies based on a work by this now highly sought writer & director--scripter Nelson Gidding and director Robert Wise have crafted a stimulating film that is as much a scientific detective story as it is a sci-fi thriller. Audience members are kept on the edge of their seats as the scientists race against time to prevent the alien microorganism from destroying life on earth, yet viewers are also clued-in enough to stimulate their gray matter and keep them speculating right along with the film's characters. Yes, 30+ years of hindsight might make the special FX and the film's depiction of technology seem a bit dusty and dated, but Gidding's plotting and Wise's creative and innovative directing keep the excitement and the earnestness intact. To some viewers, the ending might seem a bit contrived, but overall THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN represents brilliant SF filmmaking. The acting is pretty good, too, and Wise was ingenious in casting generally low-profile actors as the scientists, which contributes to making the characters seem true-to-life. One of the most brilliant examples of this is the casting of brash, average-looking Kate Reid as the gritty Dr. Ruth Leavitt. As is common practice in Hollywood, Wise could have chosen a sexy starlet (think Raquel Welch in 1966's FANTASTIC VOYAGE or, more recently, Rene Russo in 1995's OUTBREAK) in hopes of increasing the box-office draw. But Wise knows that in order to sell the plausibility of the plot, the characters must also feel genuine, and the wise (no pun intended) casting of non-glamour actors like Reid in this type of role more accurately reflects the real world and therefore enhances the film's overall sense of realism. The DVD release of THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN from Universal Studios belongs in the film collections of all serious science-fiction fans. Not only does it offer the film in anamorphic widescreen at its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1--which, by the way, allows viewers to awe over some of the brilliant multi-view compositions of certain shots that were aesthetically mutilated in pan-and-scan versions--but it also offers a fascinating and insightful feature commentary by director Wise and a featurette on writer Michael Crichton. Of course, there is the requisite theatrical trailer, too. And all this for a very reasonable retail price.
Rating:
Summary: A STRAIN TO DIE FOR
Review: I have seen reviews where the reviewer didn't like this film because it wasn't true to the book. Having read the book, I'm glad that this film turned out to be so much better than the book ever was.
After watching the movie on DVD, I watched the bonus feature about the making of the Andromeda Strain, saw the interview with the book's author, Michael Crichton, who himself was very pleased with the way the movie expanded upon what he had written. It was also a chance to see how much extraordinary effort that went into the movie, and seeing the groundbreaking techniques in photography needed to visualize the Andromeda virus itself as well as the "three dimensional" diagrams of the Wildfire installation. Too many people onsider the movie hoaky by today's standards, but the then new technologies that went into the Andromeda Strain made it possible to have the special effects of today.
I had a copy of the Andromeda Strain on VHS, commercials included since it was recorded from a "Sunday Afternoon" movie show many years ago. That tape is now somewhat lost in my huge video collection and I don't get the chance to see it too often. But even if I see this movie only once in every three or four years, the movie still has an impact on me today and every time I watch it. Robert Wise created such a sense of urgency that was never truly present in the book, which to me, read more like a
congressional report on C-Span rather than a good sci-fi book. Watching James Olson trying to dodge the lasers in the core but not succeeding too well, then reaching the place he needed to be only to find some hysterical technician run away in fear from him-- that is an unforgettable moment. Eighteen seconds to nuclear self-destruction; can he get the key in the slot before the big boom that not only will kill him and his colleagues, but will also spread Andromeda around the world in a vast super-colony. We know our hero will save the day, but that's the kind of suspenseful moment I always find myself holding my breath no matter how many times I see the film.
I wholeheartedly recommend this film to any science fiction fan because there has never been anything like this since; not even the newer films like Outbreak or other virus/plague movies.
Rating:
Summary: Good Sci-Fi Thriller
Review: "The Andromeda Strain" concerns a sattelite that falls to earth at a small New Mexican town carrying a microbe that wipes out virtually the whole town's populace. A team of super-scientists and a surgeon are summoned to a high-tech lab in the Nevada desert to isolate it before it wreaks more havock. This is an intelligently told thriller whose lone fault would be the deliberate pace of the story. It kind of plays like an episode of "ER" with global implications. The cast(Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, and Kate Reid) are uniformly excellent. The art direction and set direction are probably the most impressive element of the film. I still find the use of split-screen that was fashionable at the time to be annoying.
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